


Blue Blazes

by RushAround



Series: Scooter's Crew [4]
Category: The Property of Hate
Genre: Alternate Universe, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Hurt/Comfort, Physical Abuse, Poisoning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-06
Updated: 2018-06-06
Packaged: 2019-05-19 02:16:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14864736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RushAround/pseuds/RushAround
Summary: Argyle has his hair dyed blue for the week.





	Blue Blazes

Jo wondered where Argyle B. Guide went during the day.

Between the bunker of Bunker and the Ghost’s throne, between the heaving pulse of film flickers, excavating artistry from the air, between the Mr. Director and the Mr. Producer passing secrets in the hallway, eyes employed and snapping side to side like a mousetraps, between a railroad spike humorously being driven through Scooter’s foot and the scream of a locomotive careening from a box far too small for the sound - cue lights, cue smoke- Bunker left - Bunker right - between Action and Cut she wondered where Argyle B. Guide went.

At some point, she’d run out of ways to polish her tambourine, straighten the ruminations of her jacket or fidget with her wig, leaving glossy pink tendrils under her fingernails, wedged within her collar, itching when she turned her head to stare at the spectre. She wanted to approach, draw her mouth across his teeth and call for him, but she suspected her voice would whirl off the insides of the hollow man and echo.

Harbouring coulds, shoulds, and wouldnots, like disks drawn tight in a spinal cord, she remained precisely where she was, primp upon a mangy makeup chair, clucked to keep still as painted talons and brush beaks pecked her cheeks, pinched her eyes, nipped her hands. It showed when age took you by the wrist and kissed your fingers. It showed more than anything.

But she looked young enough to pull away from it’s overstayed greeting through scoffs, jokes tailored to her gender, and careful camerawork. For all intents and purposes, she was 22 and that was that.

The flesh pastes squeezed as they dried like the sheathed skin of a boa constrictor. It was firm in practice, but flaked in the field, fell away around a real smile. Cracks crosshatching a break in character too easy to spot onstage where the lights were tuned to find you no matter what.

She considered scratching her nose before -a moment later- the makeup trailer became haunted. That is to say, a spirit slipped inside and sat next to her. They shared a flick of eye contact, like the cap of a tin lighter, and she greeted his heavy crowsfeet as one would the sagging tassel of a rug’s folded corner. She saw it, declared it someone else’s problem, and did nothing. It would crimp later, as habit tends to have it, but at least she could get a look at him. He pretended not to do the same.

Age sat between them, twiddling its minutes and wondering if it ought to wait outside.

A curt nod said good morning to the makeup lady and an ankle found a knee as he rested back in his chair, gloved fingers folded photo perfect. He seemed relaxed and Jo was jealous, powders and plastics paling her as further flesh hailed from what claws the makeup lady called a kit, black handled and straying, like a murder of crows.

She wanted to take his hand, but ran the risk of ruining her nails, so she settled instead on deducing the hours of actual sleep he’d gotten based on how much of the previous day’s concealer he’d rubbed off on his pillow whilst tossing, giving the blazing half moon bruise around his eye a moment to warm its palms.

An hour. His shoulders rose stiff when he breathed, like the sea swallowing shore rocks. An hour and twenty minutes. He glanced at the makeup lady, digging into her bag with her black devil’s fingernails. A line pursed in his neck like the pull of the tide against an ocean worn sea spire just under the surface. He’d slept too long on that side, though she reasoned the opposite roll of his ribcage probably favoured the air than the press of a mattress and the weight of his body settling like the seabed. He reminded her more of a shipwreck. A fresh shipwreck. New and submerged and destroyed. An hour and twenty minutes before capsizing.

“You’re done.”

Jo rose from her seat though her thinking self sat upon the thought of Argyle B. Guide, and where he was going.

The makeup lady approached like a vulture and like clockwork, his head clicked back, face like a salt flat.

He swallowed, a sign of animation, movement, assuring an onlooker he hadn’t simply stopped though the thought lingered, a backburning threat of discontinuation, like watching a wind up toy someone else had wound. She wondered how many turns it had taken to get him out of bed that morning. She considered the size of the key, and the size of the keyhole, then whether there was a key at all or whether the Mr. Producer and the Mr. Director had jammed a large paperclip into his back, and turned it until he’d started singing.

Like the sea lapping a stone the blazing bruises dowsed and his face fell into facade, straight and placid and perfect like a drowned man. She hadn’t meant to stand and watch, but she had and it made her wonder whether it made matters worse or made his worseness matter. Someone ought to know, she told herself, someone ought to know. Just in case.

The case never came. There were contracts against it.

The Makeup lady put her brushes and pastes aside and proceeded to poison the room and Jo couldn’t stay. Fumes upon fumes placated the air between them as the Makeup lady glared toxins over the mouth of a bleach bottle.

That’s right, it was Wednesday. Bunker would be having his hair coloured before the previous shade had a moment to fill its lungs, let alone fade respectfully, make a mark and go quietly. Jo thought it more like peeling wallpaper than repainting a room. She wondered what his roots looked like. She wondered if they’d be blonde, or gray like a church.

But the glare was beginning to burn and Jo - by force of the fumes and fumigation of feeling - left the makeup trailer. She did not have a quiet walk to the sound stage waiting for her.

Long shadows like panther tails stretched round the corner and Jo thought maybe to duck behind the nearest prop shed, kneel behind a barrel of broken plaster skulls low enough to evade the slice of sight without ruining her stockings. But she did not, because they were not there for her.

They - the stagehands, paid labour and stubborn audience members - pooled into the empty pathway, a sea of darkened brows, arched sharp above eyes primed to pierce like bolts in a crossbow. They moved in chaotic unison like ribbons of white water, washing her rock shoulders.

She met a set of eyes and regretted it. They boiled, far off, like a storm she could spot from the tip of a ship. In the distance, beyond her control. The most she could do was steer clear, and she did, into her nominated hiding place.

A basin of hate swirled and churned just outside the trailer, and he’d be neck deep and treading when he stepped out, be pulled to heel by the undertow and kneel in a riverbed he’d made. They would have him lay in it.

It didn’t take long to colour hair. Not here.

He paused before the small crowd lapping at his toes, hair a stringy blue blaze, stuck to his brows, still wet. He smoothed it back with a hand, fingers shaking.

She saw him look over the group, as Bunker did so often his studio audience, searching for an opening, an opportunity, an escape route. She crept nearer to the mouth of the alley, her heel catching a length of rope lying coiled around a trashcan. An idea approached, but she let it pass like the wrong bus. If Jo threw him a lifeline, she couldn’t be sure he’d take it. Instead, she lay in wait for…something, pressed close to the corner, curled shadows over her shoulders, perfect nails snagging the brickwork, and watched.

It only took a single step backwards to break the sheet of ice at eye level, drowning stillness and snapping the scene into movement like a face breaking the surface. Voices thrashed, hands flooded fists and fists flooded flesh as dirt and dust grew hot with bodies and teeth tearing the morning. She gripped the corner hard and her nail polish peeled.

He bled across the stairs and against the trailer as they swung him round by the arms, a sleeve popping at the shoulder before coming free, leaving him kissing concrete. Hard.

He half rose and seized his worse side, coughed dark specks and tried his very best to breathe, eyes shut tight against the strain.

“Them bad hands, they weren’t kidding around this time.” She’d tell him later.

One wound up and kicked him in the nose, a point blank round of steel toe. The back of his head cracked a disembodied fiberglass crystal ball among the scattered trash.

“They made a mess of your get up, Director Man’d sink a freighter if it meant drowning your contract on board.” She’d remark later.

He clapped a hand to his face, but bled quick, his fingers couldn’t keep up.

They knelt and seized his collar to lift him to his feet but his bowtie came undone. He asked one to pick it up and they did, wrapping it in their fingers then feeding it fisted back to him. His brow split like a shoeprint broke a sand dune.

“Why didn’t you kick back and hide in the trailer?” She’d ask him later.

She hadn’t noticed when one had broken from the group like a tooth and disappeared into the trailer until they’d emerged, bearing a borrowed something behind their back. Two wide nailed fingers rose to shape a whistle that split the air like a sewing needle. It made Jo wince, but heads rose from hate’s red haze to stare at the stagehand, and they answered every burning question with what they’d brought.

The Makeup Lady’s runoff bucket. It sat heavy in hands like a heart, dribbles of bleach and blue staining skin and dripping to the floor.

The metal coils tightening against Jo’s lungs froze between wondering what the bucket was for, and realizing it made no difference whether she knew or not. They still put their hands on him. They still dragged his folded form to the center of the space. They still held him down, arms and legs pinned to the dirt like a stuck spider.

She noticed the soles of his shoes were wearing out before they met eyes. Jo had stepped closer during the scuffle, her pink nails like neon scales against the brown brickwork. She’d stand out to a man in a panic, and now he knew she was watching and doing all he had asked of her.

Absolutely nothing.

A false nailtip chipped. His nose bled without discipline, wrapping his lips, chin and bared teeth in a red curtain.

And then they grabbed his hair, yanking his head back to stare at the sky before the one holding the bucket came to stand between Jo’s sights, blocking her view. They knelt, a foot on either side of his chest, almost a straddle and Jo almost felt envy, but she couldn’t see what was happening, so she moved.

Into the alleyway, around the back, up another pathway between trailers, one box closer. She could see his face again, but in the time it had taken her to round the bend, they’d all drawn tighter. Had he began to struggle?

He had, and as he did, vainly against bonds of spite and grudge pressed to a grindstone, she heard him speak for the first time that morning.

“Please- I have to sing-” His voice cracked like a deck under mutinous boots, squealing and flooding.

The one who held the bucket reached down and seized his nose, blocking it between finger and thumb. He howled, pulling back, trying to shrink into the earth. Another kept him still, seizing another angry handful of hair.

She saw the grip on the bucket shift, the stained fingers wrapping over the edge, nails brushing the contents and Jo felt and fought the urge to run in any direction, like the shards of a wine glass waiting to scatter.

He could only hold his breath for so long, and he could not escape the grip on his nose or hair. It was only a matter of moments before his mouth tore open, dragging in air by its ankles, and he knew before she did that was a mistake. She knew it when the bucket’s lip jammed between his teeth.

The contents coated his face and neck in a wild shock of watered blue, tinting his skin a bloodless cyan. It was a short splash, but Jo could smell it from where she stood, and raised a hand to shield her senses though she wasn’t quite close enough for the fumes to fully seize her. She heard him choke, watched his legs kick against the hold they’d on him, jerk his head until a hand clamped over his mouth, fingers digging into his bruised cheeks, palm sealing his lips.

“…Go on….you want to breathe, don’t you?”

They were making him drink it. Poison upon poison. They were dangling a ring of keys through the bars and declaring him free if only he had the mettle to reach them. She’d called him a character, destructive, door holding, firestarter but when they kissed she exhaled because the thirst for breath scared her more than anything. It pulled them all back to the sea, she thought, to barren basics. Jo wasn’t surprised when he lost the fight, eyes wide and body bent. Anyone would have.

He swallowed, and her eyes burned. Coughs tore his voice apart but she heard begging notes shaved by sharp sharps drown in poisons filling his mouth again and like a cat caught under a train, Jo didn’t know what to do.

That is to say -of course- she knew she ought not move and stay put, wring her hands until her fingers broke off against one another and she melted straight to her core, her body collapsing in on itself, like a thin skinned candle, to be scraped up and tossed out in the morning. Maybe they would have him chew broken bottles in the trash and he’d eat up her traces by accident. She was as good as poisoning him as it was so why not double the dosage?

Jo knew exactly what she should not do, which is why she did not do it until he caught her.

The whites in his eyes flashed under their lids, pinked by bruises, wild with panic, stilled like a car crash when he glanced her in the shadows and Jo felt her body constrict from the outside in. She could not move. It took trying to breath to realize she wasn’t actually standing waist deep in gunpowder, that it was herself, her own legs, her own skin keeping her like a convict’s conviction set against a moral muslin backdrop. She couldn’t know what they all really wanted, what the Mr. Director would think or say of her or him or do to either, but a spark slipped from the corner of his eye and suddenly…Argyle was there and it was all ablaze.

And suddenly, Jo was moving.

“Argyle!”


End file.
